She looks down at the tablet, zooms in on her beautiful sunroom, staring back at her. And I can see it going through her mind—everything that may have been witnessed there. And by whom.
“You can thank your son-in-law for anything that is happening to your family,” Quinn says.
“I think we’re playing way past that at this point,” Nicholas says.
“Is that right?”
“Focusing on him isn’t particularly serving you. Focusing on the past isn’t serving any of us. Not when we all need to focus on what happens now.”
“Which is what exactly?” Frank says.
His tone is so quiet and serious that it’s almost hard to hear him. As if he wants it to be hard to hear him. As if Frank wants to convey to Nicholas—and only him—what has been started here. What Nicholas has started here. And what the price will be if he doesn’t figure out a way to stop it.
“They get to go on with their lives now,” Nicholas says. “All of them. Your children. And mine. Charlie and the kids. Hannah and Bailey. And Owen too.”
“Owen too?”
“Yes. All of them. This all fucking ends here.”
Frank doesn’t say anything, not at first.
“If my children were sloppy enough to allow this to happen, who is to say that I care enough about them that I won’t just let them go down?”
“Isn’t that the one thing we have in common? Even now, Frank?” He pauses. “We’d do anything for our children.”
Frank meets Nicholas’s eyes. He looks him right in the eyes, and he pulls out a gun. He pulls out a gun, and I think he is bluffing. Of course he is bluffing. Isn’t this what you do when you are bluffing?
Except then he shoots.
Four Years Ago
They were eating in South Pointe Park, at Frank’s favorite steak house. It was just the two of them having dinner, but Frank rented out the back room anyway. The back room with the best views of that special piece of Miami oceanfront.
They were having a birthday dinner—seventy-six for Frank, seventy-one for Nicholas. These were numbers they didn’t want to acknowledge, but also were happy to acknowledge. It was several months belated for Nicholas. He had spent his actual birthday with Bailey, the week of her high school graduation. She and Hannah had taken him to their favorite restaurant in the Castro for risotto and Sweetwater oysters and the best lemon cake he’d ever tasted in his life. And soon he would be with them again—the family heading to Hawaii for Christmas, for Bailey’s break.
Nicholas would get to be with Bailey for a whole week. He’d have a whole week of getting to watch Bailey being Bailey. It was crazy how much joy that brought him, just watching Bailey be Bailey. It was crazy for him to know that kind of joy again.
Nicholas was filling Frank in on all of it, on Bailey’s graduation. On the Hawaii plans. Frank laughing that she was trying to make Nicholas go surfing with him; Frank laughing that Nicholas was going to try and do it.
And Nicholas could see it—how happy Frank was for him. About all of it.
“I’m talking too much. Which I guess is just a way of saying thank you. Thank you for letting me call in that favor.”
“Favor?”
Frank looked at him, confused. And Nicholas could see him pulling it up in his memory—that moment all those years ago, two nights before Nicholas reported to prison, when Frank promised him he’d make it up to him. He’d make it up to Nicholas that he was going to prison for Frank. That he was taking that impossible hit.
But now Frank only shook his head.
“That’s not the favor…”
“No?”
“No. I’d never let your family be hurt. Not on my watch. You deserve safety for your family. You’re a good man.”
“I don’t know that either of us should be talking about what a good man is,” Nicholas said.
“That’s true too.”
